For a moment the Alkazarians said nothing, just standing there staring at them. Finally, the first one said, “You may follow us. We are going to put you on a night train as soon as possible. You will come with us and make no comments, nor stop, nor deviate from the route. If you need to ask anything, ask now.” It was not lost on any of them that he did not introduce himself, even by title.
“The lady has not eaten,” Har Shamish told him.
“Indeed? What does she eat?”
“Fruits, vegetables, anything not of flesh.”
“Then she will not find much here and we would waste time trying. You will be at the border in a few hours and you can find something there. We are not equipped for visitors, you see.” He seemed to think a minute, then added, “I might be able to find some water, nothing more.”
“No, let us go,” she responded, feeling the coldness of this pair. “I have fasted far longer than a mere day.” She also wasn’t sure whether the water in this loathsome, smelly place would be drinkable anyway.
“Do you have any recording or photographic equipment?” the official demanded. “Such things are forbidden here.”
“You’ve examined us all the way down to our gullets,” Shamish noted. “You should know better than we that we have nothing of the sort, nor weapons, nor anything else on the forbidden list. Our only interest is in expeditiously traveling to Quislon.”
“Everybody seems to want to go to Quislon all of a sudden. Once you’ve seen it, you will not want to go there again. Very well, come with us.”
They didn’t take them far, for which all were grateful. Not only was the air quite thin, affecting the two Pyrons more than Jaysu, but it was also paradoxically thick, not in density, but with odors most foul. It was getting near dark, but Jaysu swore she could see clouds of yellow, purple, pink, and much worse hanging over the miserable, densely packed region. She couldn’t comprehend how anyone could live in a place like this, let alone survive for long.
They were bundled into the back of a strange wheeled vehicle. Two armed guards with nasty-looking rifles hung off each side of the tailgate, and two more rode on the running boards on either side of the driver’s central cubicle. The truck itself was open, like the crawler’s had been below. Never had she felt so much like a prisoner.
The two Pyrons seemed lethargic, as if drained of much of their energy. She was sure it wasn’t the air, which was thinner than at the surface but not debilitatingly so, and she decided it must be the chill. It was cold up here, and the vast tablelands on the other side of the Wall were also of high elevation. There was no snow on the ground, but there were patches of white not far above them on the mountainsides and in the high passes, and there was a crispness to the air that she found at first bracing but, as the wind blew and the sun set, began to feel raw and numbing to her exposed face and body. This was definitely not fun.
Making things worse were the silent but menacing guards, ard the sights that they passed as well: groups of people, each with their own uniform combinations and armbands and funny hats and the like, all going here or there, all silently, without any sense of joy or relief that one would expect at the end of the day, nor even bantering bad jokes or light-hearted insults as coworkers often did. They were dull-eyed and had gray souls, without life or sparkle, without any sense of more than existence. They seemed like the road crews below; prison inmates, even if they had no evident guards.
Of course, the omnipresent stalks with their tiny pencil-thin cameras and all the rest were as good as any guards. She saw few females about, and, above or below, it struck her that she’d seen no children. The oppressiveness of the place almost overwhelmed her. What a sad little race this was, so bereft of joy or any other feeling that made life worth living. With all their ingenuity and technology, they hadn’t paused to enjoy what they had made, nor let their great machines take the heavy work away, but instead they’d become like the machines they used.
It wasn’t the frozen land that was so bad, but the frozen hearts within.
At least she didn’t sense that Har Shamish was worried about their situation. If she’d sensed that, she might have been close to figuring how to get out of this situation. As it was, she nervously allowed the little creatures to drive them to their train.
It was an even more unusual train than it had been a ride on the truck. It was fairly wide, but had no wheels or crawler treads or anything else that she could see in the well-lit station area. Instead it seemed to wrap itself around a single thick rail or post and just sit there.
Like everything else in this Heaven-forsaken place, it was painted a dull gunmetal-gray and had few markings on it. There was an engine, of sorts, then a passenger car in back, then what appeared to be several enclosed cars used for freight or animals, and, finally, a series of cars that were sealed tightly, contents or purpose unknown.
As soon as their truck stopped, the guards jumped down and took a protective stance around it and finally them, as if they expected an attempt on their life. It clearly didn’t seem directed at them, except perhaps to impress them with their importance.
The officer came around to the back and barked, “You will all get out now! The train cannot be held for you and it is due to depart in seven minutes!”
Slowly, groaning, the two Pyrons managed to get down. She jumped down, involuntarily flexing her wings to cushion the jump as she did so. This caused the guards to suddenly whirl about as one and point their rifles menacingly in her direction, but she folded the wings and stared at them and they backed off.
“Follow me!” the officer ordered, and they walked behind him toward the waiting train. As they did, another train from the other direction approached, and she marveled that it seemed to make no sound at all. That didn’t seem right. Even feet made noise when they were put to work.
Har Shamish, in the lead as always, started for the open, warm-looking and well-lit passenger car, but a rear guard snapped something and the officer held up a hand, stopping them. “No, not that car,” he said. “This car!” He pointed to the freight car behind the passenger one.
Shamish was still lethargic, but forced himself to alertness. “I protest! That car is clearly for hauling animals! Are you suggesting that we are animals to be treated as cargo?”
The little officer was ready for him. “No. I am suggesting that, first and foremost, you will not be able to fit in any seats in the passenger car, and we are not in a position to modify it for your onetime requirements, which are, you might recall, a courtesy we extended to your government although we had no profit in doing so save exhibiting our goodwill. Also, your short notice means that all of the passenger seats are taken by our people, who travel only when their duties require it. Your consulate said nothing about reimbursing us for a special train and extra crew. This is the best we can do. Take it, or leave it and we will take you back to the Eastern Lift and you can return to where you came from. And I would suggest you do not take much time in deciding this or arguing any further, since the train will leave in”—he looked at the big digital clock which displayed figures that looked more like animal scratching—“two minutes and twenty seconds regardless.”
Shamish knew they had him. “Very well, we will board, but your government will get a strong protest when I return!”
“You’ve already made it and are so recorded,” the officer noted, gesturing at one of the ubiquitous cameras.
With that, the Pyron vice-consul walked into the freight car, and she and O’Leary had no choice but to follow.
Guards came up, slid the door shut, and they heard an ominous clunk as it closed completely. After a moment two small emergency lights went on, one on each end of the car, allowing minimal sight for her and just enough light for them, but also showing that there were no windows or peepholes. A small compressor whined someplace overhead, and they could feel some air circulation, so they wouldn’t suffocate, but otherwise they were as much in prison as if in a fortified jail.
Some sort of
livestock had been transported in the car; it smelled gamey, although it had been as cleaned out as these sort of cars ever were. There was also a soft flooring covered with artificial grass, which gave Jaysu something of a foothold.
O’Leary went to the door and checked it. There was a panel with a series of lights set into the door, a master emergency open switch, but without the code it was impossible to use.
The two small lights blinked, as did the panel, and they started to move. It was so sudden that Jaysu barely had time to dig into the artificial turf and grab onto a reinforcing rod running along the length of the car for stability. The two Pyrons were bowled over by the motion, but landed softly, in serpentine fashion.
The train wasted no time at all once under way. They could feel the acceleration, and, if anything, it increased as it must have cleared the freight yards in the city.
It took her a while to compensate for it, and she didn’t think the two others ever would.
O’Leary flared his hood menacingly in frustration and anger at the treatment, but he got control back quickly. He was an old pro, and losing your temper when you had no way at all to change a situation profited nobody.
Instead the large serpentine head looked around, as if surveying every square millimeter of their prison. “At least we’re not alone as we travel,” he commented sourly.
The other two turned to see what he was looking at, and sure enough, there was a thin, pipelike camera next to the light at the far end. Almost as one they looked to the nearer end and the other light and, sure enough, there was another. Together, they had to cover the entire car.
“I wonder if the passengers are looking at the freaks on screens?” O’Leary mused.
“I doubt it,” Shamish responded. “It’s probably the men in the hidden security office in the engine. They wouldn’t trust ordinary folks.”
“What kind of insanity rules this place?” Jaysu almost wailed. “I mean, I think I have to pass some water. Where do I do it in this thing, and without being watched and recorded?”
“I’m afraid you don’t have any privacy,” Shamish replied. “And as for the where of it, I’d say the far corner of the car is about as much of a toilet as we’re going to get. Cheer up. If they are taking us where we want to go, it will only be a few hours, maybe less at the speed this thing is moving. And somebody, most likely one or more of them, is going to have to clean up any mess.”
It was impossible to tell how much time was passing as they rolled along, but if they were going almost anywhere within the hex, they certainly were not about to spend a long time cooped up, not at the evident speed the train was making.
“You don’t have a watch?” O’Leary asked Shamish, a bit surprised.
“I did, but the security agent at the Zadar docks took it. You mean you don’t have one?”
“I carried one of those self-winding things that supposedly works anywhere, but I lost it someplace weeks ago. Doesn’t much matter, unless we stop, of course.”
Jaysu looked over at them. “You think they might just leave us here? After all we’ve come through?”
“Well, probably not,” Shamish admitted. “I mean, my consulate knows I’m making this trip, and I’m expected back within a certain period. Still, they can trump up anything they want around here and stall for ages. They know as well as anybody that nobody’s going to declare war over one missing vice-consul. No, this is the risk we decided we had to take to cross Alkazar. We’re in their hands, and nobody else can help us or reach us. Still, I’m not too worried. They could have taken us or polished us off in a lot of places, and they are well-known for not showing foreigners who have to come up here any more of their dear inner homeland than they possibly can. You can see why just from the glimpse we had of it. They’ve raped it. Little grows there now, they are unlikely to have sufficient food stock to feed that kind of population, and they have to import almost anything in that area. In the end, they need us and the goodwill and trade we provide more than we need them. It’s just closer to buy the raw materials from them than elsewhere, but if we don’t ship them everything from fodder for their feed animals to often the animals themselves, well, it wouldn’t take long.”
She had been in this now long enough to begin thinking on a wider scale. “But does that not make them vulnerable to pressure far beyond what it should? You would not have to make war on such a place; a simple blockade would do it, would it not?”
“Easier said than done, a blockade,” Shamish told her. “Still, it wouldn’t take a lot of disruption of trade to cause real rumbles here, it’s true. It’s another reason why I think we’re going where we want to go. Chalidang can shake them, but Pyron is much, much closer. They were leaning more toward the Chalidang Alliance, until Ochoa anyway, because they’re kind of soulmates of those squid. Winning that battle has tipped things back our way. My sense is that they’re playing a balancing game, ready to tip to whoever seems likely to win. If they take us through, then they do something for them, and when a winner emerges, they pop up and say they were with you all along.”
She shook her head in wonder. “All this cynicism, dishonesty, double dealing. And for what? To preserve what we saw of places like this? It makes no sense!”
“That’s right,” O’Leary agreed. “It makes no sense. It doesn’t make any greater sense in the rest of the galaxy, or maybe in the rest of the universe, for that matter. It’s the way things work. It’s why folks like you have respect and the jobs you do, really. People are always looking for sense, and religion provides both sense and a feeling of comfort.”
“But you do not believe in the divine.” She said it as a statement, not a question.
“I have seen too much. Like I said down below, I believe in evil, in the opposite of your ‘divine,’ so to speak. I’ve seen it everywhere. I’ve not seen much of the good side, though.”
“You must have had a sad upbringing yourself,” she said.
He sighed. “My parents were both god-fearing sorts, but even though I was raised in my father’s faith, they were quite different in their religious backgrounds. So different, in fact, that they were killed by the followers of one side for intermarrying and seeming to be happy and successful in spite of it. They were ordered to take sides. But they were both sides, you see, and they had settled their own religious war in the best of ways. So they were killed.”
“How horrible! How old were you when this happened?”
“Old enough to track down the ringleaders and dispatch them the way they had my parents. And then I left my home and never returned, cursing it forever, and I finished my schooling on a world that had few of my kind there, and then I became a cop. It was only after that that I really saw what true evil could be. Spare me the prayers and the sermons—I had enough of nuns and priests in my youth. If there’s salvation, I’m too old for it. But there might still be a measure of justice. In a sense, I’ve pursued some very evil people all the way to this world. Two of us have, in fact, the other far more twisted inside than me. But if we can get them, we’ll get them.”
Shocked at what he said, she did not continue the conversation, yet she couldn’t help but reflect how little difference there was, deep down, between the policeman and the coldblooded criminals he hunted, almost as if you could have found him on the other side with just one slight added twist of fate. Was it, perhaps, the same for his quarry? Was the evil he fought as fanatic? Was he, in effect, hunting his darker self?
It was too weighty a question for these circumstances, but precisely the kind of moral questions she found most fascinating in study and meditation.
“We’re slowing down,” Shamish commented, and the other two immediately felt this as well.
“A scheduled stop, perhaps?” O’Leary wondered. “Or have we arrived at our destination, whatever that is?”
“It better be the freight yards at Borol,” Shamish replied. “If it isn’t, then we are betrayed.”
The train glided to a smooth stop, barely j
erking the car at all.
“Magnetic levitation train,” Shamish told them. “No friction. When you stop, you just turn off the power and the thing’s a brick.”
The car was solid enough that outside sounds didn’t penetrate, so they had no way of knowing just who or what might be out there. It made them all nervous, and Jaysu closed her eyes and tried to project her senses outside and around the car now that it was stopped.
“Lots of people running about, apparently all Alkazarians,” she said. “No—wait. Not all. There are—others out there. At least three, maybe more. They are in back of us, concerned with another car.”
She suddenly had both their absolute attention.
“You can sense that?” O’Leary asked, amazed.
“I can see it, but the vision is very different,” she responded. “I cannot, for example, tell you anything physically about them, only that they are not natives and they are quite agitated, in some great hurry. They are, I believe, offloading some very large crates from one of the boxcars.”
“At least they can get the door unlocked,” Shamish mumbled.
“They’re done with their heavy lifting. There are five of them, or so it seems. The natives are ignoring them completely. Now they are talking among themselves. I cannot hear at this distance, nor would the translations come through anyway, so I have no idea what they are saying, only that it seems they are splitting into two groups. Three of them are going off with whatever goods they unloaded. Two more are— I believe they are headed this way! They are cold, businesslike but cold, and a bit nervous. One stops a native, says something, perhaps passes something to it, and the natives are now all walking away from us. I do not like this.”
O’Leary looked over at Shamish. “I think our Alkazarians just took sides.” He looked around. “Any chance of smashing those lights out?”
“Maybe, but what good does that do us? They control the exit, remember, and these little bastards refused to let us have any weapons.”
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